Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.

Fortunately, I got enlightened 10 years earlier almost immediately after spending a couple of hours studying the Free Software Manifesto. When you ask yourself what your human rights are regarding software, you'd have to be a vegetable not to be impressed by the immense wisdom behind Free Software.

I didn't need Obama signing questionable legislation into law either to reach this epiphany. Microsoft, Apple and friends did it for me. Linux "may be" rough around the edges, but my software freedom is something I'm unwilling to sacrifice as a geek, software engineer and computer user.